ERTRAC 20 Years Anniversary Conference

The European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC) celebrated its 20^th anniversary with an evening reception and conference from 05 – 06 July 2023 at the Palais des Académies in Brussels last week. During the ERTRAC reception, on 05 July 2023, EARPA organised an informal farewell to both Josef Affenzeller and Professor Zissis Samaras who are retiring. Both Josef and Zissis have been key actors within EARPA for a long time, as well as in representing EARPA in Brussels.

The two-day event brought together highly respected participants, speakers, and the European road research community to foster knowledge sharing and discuss innovations for mobility.

EARPA’s contribution to ERTRAC and its anniversary event

Over the last 20 years, EARPA has actively supported ERTRAC with other founding associations such as EUCAR, CLEPA and CONCAWE in helping to advance roadmaps for relevant R&I topics and provide guidance to ERTRAC working groups.

On the 06 July 2023 at the conference, many key figures and EARPA members took to the stage in about every panel session to demonstrate their knowledge, insights and innovations in transport research.

The opening session moderated by Rosalinde van der Vlies (European Commission) brought together Prof. Zissis Samaras (LAT), Josef Affenzeller (AVL List GmbH) and Simon Edwards (Ricardo) to discuss ERTRAC’s history and about how European transport research has evolved during the last 20 years.

Following that Adrià Ferrer (IDIADA) and Margriet Van Schijndel (Eindhoven) spoke about research efforts to support the European road safety objectives and the long-term vision towards connected, cooperative and automated mobility. Thilo Bein (Fraunhofer) also moderated the final session on circularity and competitiveness and and Simon gave an outstanding summary of the entire conference.

For more information on the ERTRAC event click here.

Farewell to Josef Affenzeller & Zissis Samaras at the ERTRAC 20 Years Anniversary Conference
During the ERTRAC reception, on 05 July 2023, EARPA organised an informal farewell to both Josef Affenzeller and Professor Zissis Samaras who are retiring. Both Josef and Zissis have been key actors within EARPA for a long time, as well as in representing EARPA in Brussels.

Josef had been our president until 2014, and has represented our association for many years in organisations such as ERTRAC and EGVIA/EGVIAfor2Zero, just to mention a few. A personalised card game, with portraits of long-time colleagues and European Commission representatives he’s been meeting with, has been handed over to him on behalf of EARPA.

Furthermore, we’ve also said goodbye to Zissis as our long-term representative as ERTRAC Vice-Chair and engine and emission expert. He has done a lot of exploratory work, paving the way for new approaches, joint visions as well as new regulations. The very last Calvin and Hobbes cartoon quite well shows how he enjoyed to start such initiatives from a blank page, making something remarkable. Thus, EARPA offered him a framed print of the cartoon.

We wish both of them very well and lots of pleasure with everything they can do now in the new freedom of retirement.